Habits and Practice or "Thy Shall End Trivia Once and For All."

My recent internet grazing seems to be reflecting a persistent theme.

Via the Instagram feed of University of Alabama at Birmingham Professor Doug Baulos, comes a list of 10 excellent commandments that can certainly be applied to effective art studio/classroom practice.

Eugene Delacroix said, "Do all the work you can; that is the whole philosophy of the good way of life."

“The 10,000-Hour Rule"

Author Malcolm Gladwell suggests that the key to mastery and success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.

Mr. Miyagi said "Wax on. Wax off."

Nineteenth century novelist Anthony Trollope wrote that, “A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.”

Artist Chuck Close famously says,

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case.” 

The Artist Habits of Mind grew out of research done by Project Zero, a group at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education.

 Aristotle said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

Quit the pretense. Engage and persist. Make good habits. Stay Goaled. 

Do the work and learn to love it.

Make Great Art!

Free Visual Art Instruction.

I'm all about self-motivation and free resources. Here are a couple of good ones:

The excellent ConceptArt.org is offering some new  Free Video Tutorials on "Composition" and "Color and Light."

Currently there are about two hours of tutorials and I understand that those who do the assignments will be getting feedback too. Pretty cool.

You must complete free registration in order to participate but it's well worth the effort. The ConceptArt forums are chock full of useful stuff.

Oh, and Craftsy.com is offering a Mini-Class (actually seven short video lessons) on Drawing the Human Figure that sounds fantastic...and it's free!

Spokewheeling

"Spokewheeling" is a cool strategy for creating visual interest and directing the viewers gaze. It's outlined by James Gurney on his blog and in his terrific book Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist.

Gurney Journey is absolutely a regular must-read blog for anyone interested in visual art, design and painting.

Check it out.

Informal Compositions

Recently I've been enjoying thinking about strategies for arranging stuff in visual art again and I've been playing with Andrew Loomis's system for creating cool compelling informal compositions. This particular technique comes from the book Creative Illustration which Amazon.com declares Loomis's magnum opus, "aimed primarily at the professional-level illustrator. Divided into seven sections: Line, Tone, Color, Telling the Story, Creating Ideas, Fields of Illustration, and Experimenting and Studies, this book is filled with instructions, tips, insider experiences, and incredible illustrations." 

This classic text and other important Loomis books can be downloaded for free online.

If you've played with Zentangles before, then this approach will seem familiar. Here instead of working towards designs of lines and patterns, your aim is to build toward actual illustrative content. It's simple. It works and it's so dang easy to create a structure to build a successful composition upon. 

The Loomis Technique for Creating Amazing Informal Compositions

Step 1.

 Draw a perpendicular (vertical) line. Place it off center, asymmetrically dividing the picture plane.

Then draw a diagonal from one corner to another.

Now draw a horizontal line at the intersection of the first two lines.

Step 2.

Now draw a single horizontal line through any RECTANGLE produced in Step 1.

Step 3.

Now draw new horizontal lines at any intersection. Now draw new perpendicular (vertical) lines at any intersection.

Step 4.

Continue creating informal subdivisions in this way.

Now build in your subject using the structural lines you've created as a compositional guide.

Make Great Art!

Investigative Work Blogs

In the past we've had great success using Wordpress to create online visual journals and portfolios.  However Wordpress is currently not getting along with the new school filters, so this year I'm asking students to create their professional artist websites for posting artwork, recording process and art related observations using the Blogger platform. 

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Post two new entries to the website/blog each week. I usually check them on Saturday. 

Student blogs are an opportunity to reflect and demonstrate:

Professionalism  A professional character, attitude, methods, practice and portfolio of current work.

Artwork analysis and vocabulary Respond to and analyze critically and contextually the function, meaning and artistic qualities of past, present and emerging art, using the specialist vocabulary of visual arts.

Cultural Analysis Analyze and compare art from different cultures and times, and consider it thoughtfully for its function and significance and relationship to your own research.

Depth and breadth of research Develop and present independent ideas. Demonstrate coherent, focused and individual investigative strategies into visual qualities, ideas and their contexts. Develop different approaches towards their study, and fresh connections between them.

Creative art making process Explore and develop ideas and techniques for studio work through integrated contextual study and first-hand observations. Produce personally relevant works of art that reveal evidence of exploration of ideas that reflect cultural and historical awareness. Present the work effectively and creatively and demonstrates critical observation, reflection and discrimination.

Integration between studio and investigations. Develop and maintain a close relationship between investigation and a purposeful, creative process in studio work.

Technique Demonstrate the development of an appropriate range of skills, techniques and processes when making and analyzing images and artifacts. Develop and demonstrate technical competence and artistic qualities that challenge and extend personal boundaries and technical competence and self-direction.